Tuesday, January 29, 2013

61+ Degrees F Jan 29 2013 Chicago

It's 61 degrees currently, with 87% humidity. There's a chance we'll hit 67 this afternoon and get as much as three inches of rain.

The bizarre just keeps on coming.

Never in my life have I talked about weather as a matter of course. But when was weather like this? We broke a record today at 6:45 a.m., hitting 60 degrees. I awoke at 3 this morning to the sound of a brief driving rain (or, I thought wryly in my half-sleep, maybe given weather extremes it's raining frogs like in Magnolia).

Remember these, planted in the unheated greenhouse and covered with plastic on Jan 9, another extra-warm winter day? Well they sprouted.

I set them all out to get a good rain pounding, the action of the water spurring more to germinate. Then they'll return to the greenhouse in their plastic bags. It's all an experiment.

Downstairs, we uncovered the raised bed to find the rats had done a nice job aerating the soil, flipping all the cool-weather greens roots-up to die. I'd want to live under that plastic too if I were them, not to mention the organic buffet. Art still has his trap line set up around the yard, with cameras trained on the important parts. Maybe he should add a couple traps here.

With the coming rain I thought I'd try broadcasting some seed on top of that nicely roughed up terrain, with a layer of straw to follow tomorrow. Here's what I sowed.

Thursday's low is supposed to be 6 degrees F. That's closer to a real Chi winter. All bets are off on the gardening front though. Wondering if Bruce and I should start seedlings earlier for spring planting. Stay tuned.







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